


know your devils and your deeds

by irnan



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: F/M, but she's earned it, pepper is sometimes a hypocrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-11
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 15:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fifteen simple rules for dating Pepper Potts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	know your devils and your deeds

**Author's Note:**

> Technically the title is paraphrased from Joni Mitchell's _a case of you_ , but the song I was listening to when I was writing it was _blue_. If you'd all be so good as to blame rule eight on leighleighla... ?

  
Tony and Pepper have a list of Rules. No one knows this about them - not even Jarvis - although Tony thinks that Rhodey probably suspects it, because Rhodey knows what Tony is capable of and what he isn't. He was a little sceptical at first, but Pepper planted her hands on her hips and said, "Look, Tony, you're an asshole. Lots of people find that attractive and other people just find it amusing and I'm in the second category, OK, there is stuff I can put up with when I'm your employee or your friend that will make me kill you if we're trying to make a relationship _work_ and it's not _rules_ rules, it's more that if I make something a rule it means you have to listen to me _properly_ and _not forget it_."

Tony opened his mouth to say something and found he didn't have anything lined up, so he took a sip of wine instead and what, what was the matter with Pepper's face -

"Of course," she said, "if you don't want..." and Tony sputtered into his wineglass and almost choked over the antipasta, what, not want, what was there to _not want_ about Pepper, it was true it'd taken him a while to fit the idea of actual sex into their relationship but then he was sure the same went for her and what was the question? Oh yeah, _not want_.

"You're crazy," he said. "I _want_ , Pepper, I want the whole thing, everything, all of it, even the _rules_."

Wow, did he just say that?

Wow, the look on Pepper's face.  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule one: no strawberries.  
  
This needs no further elaboration, unless to remark that Tony finds it unnecessary and pointless and kind of offensive because hello, he is a genius and actually has a really good memory, just about photographic, he thinks he can grasp this one, except that he obviously hadn't really flipped the on-switch the last time the strawberry thing came up and Tony is smart enough to know that this is a thing to be humbly apologetic for, preferably on his knees.

No really. His knees. They can take it, he's not that old.

(He'll never be too old for this.)  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule two: if he's going to insist on leaving the bed at odd hours of the night to go work in the shop he can damn well tidy up their clothes on the way and make her breakfast after.  
  
Tony pauses the first time he hears this one, because Pepper has a tight look about the eyes and her smile is too hard, which is the sort of look she generally gets when she's being flippant about something she really didn't enjoy very much and doesn't want to talk about, which is unusual for her because she's not generally afraid to tell him when she's unhappy about something or someone, oh, that's it, was it really - it's not like he asked her to start pressing their suits and stuff, why did she even.

"Nobody deserves to be thrown out of your manor house at the crack of dawn to face the paparazzi wolves in last night's crumpled suit, Tony," says Pepper.  
He watches her for a minute, skin pale in the clear morning sunlight, knees drawn up to her chest, white sheets draped over them. Her hair's down and loose, tousled, staticky. Pepper's hair is very fine - delicate, he teases her sometimes.

He clears his throat. "I'll, uh, get you breakfast then."

She looks up at him; this smile is genuine. "Thanks."

It occurs to him on his way out of the bedroom that not everybody drinks their coffee the way he does and he has seen her drink coffee surely he has been present when she's ordered some and she takes hers... "Coffee. Milk with... how many...?"

Pepper shakes her head. "None. No sugar. Thank you."

"My pleasure, Miss Potts," he says, and an hour later, when he's taken a very quick but comprehensive cooking-breakfast-lesson from Jarvis, who gets his skills off the internet, and is watching her eat it with every sign of enjoyment, Tony finds to his own surprise that it _was_ , in fact, his pleasure.  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule three: no flir- oh - oh, OK, he can flirt, but just, like, _gently_ , don't give people ideas.  
  
"I am an incorrigible flirt who thus far in his life has been unwilling to sustain a serious relationship with anyone that has lasted longer than a week," says Tony, indignant. "I am not _incapable_ , Potts, of adhereing to the concept of _monogamy_."

He doesn't mention the sudden flashback he gets the first time he's cheerfully flirting with someone and Pepper wanders over and sort of slides into the space at his side, fitting there with a click that's actually audible to Tony, oh wait, that was her heels on the floor, and how Mom used to do that when someone was simpering at Dad and how Howard's attention would break, just briefly, and then snap back, refocussed entirely and exclusively on Maria; it's funny, of all the things he'll happily believe of his Dad and for all the reasons he'd still like to get to punch the old man in the face sometimes, just once, Tony has never, ever doubted the strength of his parents' relationship.

The main difference, he slowly comes to realise, between how Pepper deals with him and how Mom dealt with Dad is that Pepper puts up with his faults only up to a certain point. Mom was tolerant to a fault of her own of the failings of the people she loved: both Dad's and Tony's.  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule four: no explosions in the house.  
  
"I will _buy you another pair_ -"

"I LIKED _THAT_ PAIR, DAMMIT TONY, NOT EVERYTHING IS REPLACEABLE."

It's not that this is news to Tony Stark. He attaches sentimental value to stuff just as much as any other guy. He's just never stopped before to ask what other people attach sentimental value to.

He does, at least, have the sense not to buy her another pair of those shoes.  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule five: never, ever, ever ignore Pepper's calls without good reason. Or at least call back as soon as possible, instead of flying home and parking his sorry ass in the garage and spending half an hour just peeling himself out of the Iron Man suit before he even lets her know he's back.  
  
She is _crying_.  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule six: never get her jewellery on a whim.  
  
She's almost crying. He's not entirely sure why - not that it's proper crying, more sort of shiny wet eyes, with possible sniffling in the near future.

"Tony, you can't - you can't give me these."

Tony is honestly perplexed. "Don't - don't you like them? I mean, I had them re-set, not much, just a couple diamonds that were - they were a little gaudy, it was the Sixties, and you're taller than my Mom and her hair was different but -"

Pepper's fingers rub, reverently, over the sparkling emeralds. "But, Tony... your _mother's_ earrings."

"I know they haven't seen the light of day in twenty years but she always hated putting her jewellery away, she used to say it was meant to be looked at."

Pepper looks at him. He shrugs.

"They'll suit you."

"Thank you."

"I think they're the ones she wore when they got married. Something blue. Trust my Dad to buy her sapphires instead of - I don't know - blue flowers, or something. What flowers are blue, Jarvis?"

"I believe, sir, that several varieties -"

"Thank you, Jarvis," says Pepper firmly, standing up. It's her I've-made-a-decision voice. She draws her own earrings out; Tony thinks her fingers are trembling. She's being kind of silly, hesitating over it. Mom always hated putting her jewels away, and she loved those earrings, and Tony remembers them best of all the pretty things she used to wear. They hang, perfectly, at Pepper's neck. When she turns her head the light catches in them, glittering.

"Pepper, you know, it's not a big deal," he says flippantly, "if you don't -"

"They're beautiful," Pepper says. She's not looking at him - she's looking at her own reflection in the window against the California night - and her voice is soft and slow. Tony knows she's telling the truth.  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule seven: always get her flowers on a whim.  
  
 _I looked at all the blue flowers_ , says the card Tony leaves in her office, _but these were the prettiest_.

When he gets back from his trip there's a vase of forget-me-nots in every room in the house.  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule eight: cook your own meals every once in a while! I know you _can_ cook a couple things, I came over to the house early once and caught you _baking_.  
  
Tony surveys the contents of his fridge with a jaundiced eye. "I know you did."

"So, cook!" says Pepper. She's trying for cheerful, but he's known her long enough that he can hear the thread of curiosity in her voice too. "Bake me apple pie. Or pumpkin pie, or any kind of pie."

"Strawberry cheesecake," says Tony, not looking round. Pepper screws up a sheet of kitchen roll and throws it at him. It bounces off his right shoulder. He drums his fingers on the fridge door.

"Tooooonyyyyyyy," says Pepper, affecting an approximate imitation of his own voice at his sulkiest, usually only ever heard when someone's trying to make him get out of bed before nine a.m. after a long spree in the lab.

"I used to bake with Mom," he says abruptly. He hadn't known he was going to say that. He carries on just the same. He's talking to the champagne bottle and the butter dish. Butter dishes don't judge. "Sometimes. She liked to bake. She didn't, you know, come from money, I mean she did sort of but she used to say she came to the US as Uncle Frank's poor relation when she was a kid, he wasn't really my uncle though he was her cousin. And she still liked to bake sometimes. Only, like, pie and desserts and stuff. That's all I can do. Italian stuff, English, French, anything. Mom would try baking anything. She'd make me help her. I think she thought it was an antidote to science. I think she used to worry about, you know, four year olds building circuit boards. And then I went to school and neither of us ever had time anymore. Dad used to - we'd sneak into his study and just leave him plates of stuff and ten minutes later he'd have eaten all of it. I don't think he ever noticed we'd made it ourselves. Mom and I used to laugh about that. Like it was a secret. But later on he'd do that with other stuff as well and that was less funny and more jackassery, but. So. I bake stuff sometimes because Mom and I used to bake. On her birthday, usually. That's kind of dumb. She's dead now, where's the significance? But. I don't know, just - Mom's birthday. Sometimes I totally forget about it and sometimes I bake."

Pepper stays silent. Tony straightens his shoulders, turns away from the butter dish, faces her. She doesn't know it, but that's taking him more courage than anything Iron Man has ever done. This makes a grand total of two occasions on which he has willingly spoken about his mother in... in what, fifteen years? There was that excruciating interview for Vogue in Italy where they _kept on_ asking about her and Tony got furious with the press for the first and last time in his life and still cannot actually remember anything about the next two days. He's never been back to Naples either. That was just before he met Pepper.

Her hands are clasped together on the table top, but she smiles at him when their eyes meet. The pressure in his chest eases when she does so.

"You want pie, Potts?" Tony says. "I'll bake you pie."  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule nine: learn to play with others.  
  
"I fail to see how this will improve the current running of this relationship in the slightest," says Tony.

"It won't," says Pepper cheerfully. They're sitting in a window-seat in the Tower; the remodelling is finally done and they're back to the champagne stage. She's lying against his chest, head tucked under his chin, legs flung out atop his own. Below them to their left New York is lit up like a Christmas tree.

Tony _likes_ New York. This is news to him. He always thought he'd never be happy anywhere but California. Not that he was ever especially happy in California. But the point was: he's never been entirely sure he'll enjoy being in this city on a semi-permanent basis. He knows now that he really does.

For "enjoy living in New York" substitute... well, lots of things.

"So why make it a rule?"

Pepper pats his forearm, lying across her stomach. "It'll improve _you_."

Tony pulls a face. "Just on general principles?"

"Don't do that," says Pepper calmly. "I know you want to."

"Meh," says Tony. It's not a noise that signifies actual disagreement, though he feels as if this were expected of him. He should be getting the Hell outta Dodge already. Venice? Hah! Try Beijing. Let's see Fury pester them there. He'd start an international incident.

He'd send Natasha, who would take even less of Tony's crap than Pepper does. Tony sighs, mentally. Supposes he's trapped.

Could be worse. It's not like it's a board meeting or a cave or anything. (And if it _is_ a cave, well, it's a cave he picked himself, which makes all the difference.)  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule ten: stop breaking the speed limit.  
  
"Oh, wow," says the trooper, mouth hanging open. He's barely seventeen, come on. "You're Tony fucking Stark."

Over in the passenger seat, Tony grins. "Pleased to meet you, Officer."  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule eleven: uninstall everything in the funjet that _makes it_ the funjet.  
  
"Or we could just sell it," says Tony.

"I think I might have to die of embarrassment if, as CEO of the company, I had to sell a jet that comes equipped with an actual stripper pole," says Pepper.  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule twel-  
  
"OK," says Tony. "You know, I think this is bull, I really do, the rules are OK, I appreciated the rules, you felt better with the rules, they worked for us, I will never dispute that, but Pepper, once we've stooped to making rules about speeding and funjets I really feel they've outlived their specific usefulness as a general guide to navigating the no-longer-muddy waters of a relationship with you."

Pepper likes to sit on things that other people would not ordinarily use as chairs: workbenches, desks, kitchen counters. She likes being that bit further above the ground, getting to swing her feet in the air like a kid; it's a thing. It's why she's sitting on the dining room table now.

"You want to abolish the rules?"

"I'm old enough to ride a bike without the training wheels now, Mom," Tony deadpans.

" _Hah_ ," says Pepper.

"Hmm?"

"Well, maybe."

Tony likes it when Pepper sits on things that other people would not ordinarily use as chairs because it's not as far to bend to put his hands on her thighs and kiss and kiss and kiss her till:

"Well, Clint _did_ promise me dinner and a show," drawls Natasha from the doorway.

There is a moment's slightly embarrassed silence while Tony clears his throat and thinks that Pepper is trying to work out if she ought to unhook her legs from Tony's hips or if that would just look childish, all things considered.

It would just look childish, all things considered. That's why he slides his hand a little further up and grips a little tighter, warm skin under thin smooth tights, probably snagged on his callouses right now. She shivers. On second thoughts, he doesn't think she was planning on moving anywhere.  
"Rule twelve," says Pepper. " _Always shut the damn door_."

"It's your Tower," Natasha says kindly. "I'll just leave."

"Tell the others not to come up here on pain of death by repulsor blast!" Tony yells after her.  
  
  
*********  
  
  
No, they're both agreed that having a rule thirteen is just asking for trouble.  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule fourteen: no drunken groping. It's disgusting and it's degrading and you're lucky I didn't use the sharp end of that microphone to stab your eyes out.  
  
"We have a rule," says Pepper.

"This is _dancing_ ," says Tony. "I'm actually quite good at it. Not that I wasn't good at being a drunken asshole. But I'm better at dancing."

"Hand," says Pepper. "Upwards. By at least three inches."

Tony rolls his eyes and shrugs and does as he's told. They turn across the dance floor lazily, swaying to something old and slow. Pepper is smiling, eyes half-closed; she's put her hair in curls again, which Tony is a fan of. Half the ballroom is watching them. The other half is pretending they don't care either way what Tony Stark and Pepper Potts do. They're not very good at it. Everyone in the world cares what Tony Stark and Pepper Potts do, even if all they're doing is dancing at a charity ball, Pepper's green dress whispering when she moves, Tony's favourite black suit immaculate. She's wearing the earrings he gave her, his mother's earrings. He can smell her perfume. If he leaned forward a little and tilted his face towards her he could smell that shampoo she uses too, some kind of minty thing. She has, Tony is sure, been using it for years, like a signature. He knows he's smelled it before. It just didn't register on him: he was always too fixated on the stuff he (thought he) _didn't_ have.

"I think I'm glad I left you on the balcony," he says.

She opens her eyes.

"He" - meaning his four-years-younger self - "would not have done well with the rules."

Pepper's eyes soften again. "Tony," she says, mouth flicking upwards. "I don't know why you think you're any better at it now."

Tony's laugh shatters the quiet atmosphere, ruins people's steps, cuts through conversations. Pepper doesn't scold him.  
  
  
*********  
  
  
Rule fifteen: don't ogle in public.  
  
Tony has the single most saunteringly arrogant walk Pepper Potts has ever seen: shoulders flung back, body loose and open, a moving invitation, an unspoken statement: _I own you all_. She thinks it very probable that he could stroll across Hell itself like he owned the place if he felt like it. She likes it, no question - there's no point trying to pretend to herself that all his Tony Stark-ness isn't stupidly attractive - but this is better: warm evening sunlight, his tan, those freckles, the grey in his hair and beard that he stopped dying out... oh, she doesn't remember when. A while ago now. And the lines in his face, put there by years of grief and self-loathing and destructiveness, by kidnapping and betrayal and self-sacrifice, all stamped over the slick good looks of the boy in those old photos, flatly angry and determined as he took over the company that was all his parents had left him with at their deaths.

Tony puts his hand at the small of her back as the picture changes: Tony-and-Pepper now, standing on the balcony at Avengers Tower, his back to the camera, her at his side, hands clasped on his shoulder, cheek resting on her fingers, smiling at the viewer. Her hair looks rich, reddish; his face is turned against it, his arm around her waist, they're both barefoot, wearing loose clothes, _happy_. SI's new logo runs across the bottom of the screen _. Celebrating the end of the last of Stark Industries' open defence contracts for the US government, and the final re-functioning of the last weapons factory still operating under our name. From now on, we're living in the future._

 __"Rule fifteen, Pepper," Tony says, grinning.

"Shut up," she laughs. "It's my marketing campaign."

"Oh, hey, I asked Springsteen -"

"Like that was a chore!" She flaps her hand at him. "But I'll give you twelve percent of credit, if you want."

He kisses her. Outside, the shouting swells to a crescendo: _To-ny, To-ny!  
_

Might as well be a rock star.

"That's my cue."

"Go get 'em, boss."

Tony saunters out into the blazing stage lights, arms outstretched, palms turned upwards.

"Ladies and gentlemen! ... pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name." Pepper shakes her head as he plays, for the last time, on all the old nicknames that will never be valid again.

At least the crowd goes wild.

"Welcome back to the Stark Expo! I feel I oughta reassure you all right from the start that this year's events are guaranteed to be less violent, if not less exciting..."

Pepper crosses her arms over her chest and settles in to spend the evening _shamelessly_ breaking rule fifteen.


End file.
